That's a very good question. The culprit is Gas, whose supply contracts are tied to oil in most places. And Coal too, in Portugal and Spain it was the tripling of prices in 2007/2008 that opened the so called "tariff deficit". Also from the experience in Portugal and Spain, the introduction of Wind and Solar forced some serious upgrades to the grid, especially to link these producers to the Hydro resources. The costs of these grid overhauls are still being paid by consumers in the grid management component of electricity bills.

luis_de_sousa@mastodon.social

Because you're replacing cheap coal with still-slightly-more-expensive sustainable supplies. Also the coal plants are required to meet more stringent pollution requirements and that costs money. Also as demand rises you have to put in more infrastructure. And fix aging distribution infrastructure. And build new distribution infrastructure that reaches the new generation facilities. The cheap supply of Russian nuclear fuel is drying up. And inflation.

From Eurointelligence email briefing earlier this week:

Germany's energy strategy could cost €1 trillion...

If you want to know the Achilles heel of the German economy, it is energy. Having unilaterally dumped nuclear energy, and refusing to support fracking, the German government is now working on a strategy to square the energy needs of the country and the industrial competitiveness - and this just does not add up. In an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine, environment minister Peter Altmaier estimated that the total costs for this strategy would be about €1 trillion. The accounting mechanics behind this number is tediously complex. Altmaier compared the rise in energy-related costs to the increase in public debt to GDP, which, too, had been underestimate for too long.

Analysis Eurointelligence's own...